No, this isn’t an episode of
The Twilight Zone, this is your real life. or rather your Post-BND Spider life. Heaped on top of all of the other indignities that we've been forced to endure (no marriage to MJ, Harry is dead/not dead, Spidey can’t seem to catch even the most bumbling of muggers, and the randomness of slowly-eroding, previously-established continuity). The most recent indication of which is that in ASM#551 wherein Peter sells a photo to the new owner of
The Daily Bugle, for two grand, and Peter thinks that should just about enough to make a batch of web fluid.
Apparently since continuity no longer matters, no one recalled that back in
Sensational Spider-Man #0 (1996) has
Ben Reilly able to prep a new batch of webbing for $16.50 and some trash he scavenged from a nearby dumpster. While I realize that I don’t expect every aspect of the previous 45 or so years of continuity to be recalled, but really...
Now, (in
Spider-Man Family #8, of all places) we are being forced to endure the indignities of generic, badly-written plots. To be sure, previous issues have all read better than recent issues of Amazing, but that level of quality seems to be slipping with this most recent issue of
Family. In this issue, we have two new stories (both retro-fitted into Spidey’s past)
The first one has Spidey and Iron Man teamed (obviously timed to help promote IM’s up-coming movie) where the two heroes go up against rogue sleeper robots built by Stark’s dad in a Cold War era to act as doomsday protectors against a Russian invasion). At the conclusion of the story there is a cute nod to the “ideas” that IM has to improve Spidey’s costume (which naturally became the
Iron Spidey costume). The second story (where the real sloppiness occurs) has Peter and Bobby Drake bumping into each other in Manhattan, and then both racing towards the same restaurant (with their respective dates — peter, interestingly enough, with Gwen not MJ) to be the ones to get there to make the last table.
The story is OK, only it feels like something that was left over from a previous script and then doctored to fit into this retcon. (
Spoiler alert) the story ends with both Bobby and his date, and Peter and Gwen arriving at the restaurant only to discover that Ben Grimm is already there with his date (presumably Alicia Masters). The appearance of Grimm leads some to believe that perhaps this story was originally crafted with Johnny Storm not Drake. (
Spoiler alert over).
Bobby in the city at this time, (and with a girlfriend), racing for a restaurant against Pete simply doesn’t ring true, especially considering that Bobby and Peter have never met (in spite of the fact that Spidey and Ice Man have met (most notably in
X-Men #s
27 &
35, and
Marvel Team-up V1 #4. Still, as civilians, these two individuals simply never met (unless there is some rectcon about which I know nothing). Plus, let’s make sure to mention that Bobby is younger (by a couple or three years) than Peter.
I’ve been reading Spidey stories for quite some time, and I’ll be honest, near as I can recall, the first (and only) time that Peter (willingly) revealed his secret Identity to any other hero was to Johnny Storm in
Spider-Man Human Torch #5. (before you all go off the deep end, in that issue Spidey revealed to Torch that DD, Wolverine, Dr. Strange and (probably) Prof X had all figured it out with their powers), and he did tell Black Cat (she has played both sides of the law, and even though they were partners for a while), but given that she has been on both sides of the law (depending on her use in in the story), she really can’t be considered the straight and narrow “hero” type.
And yeah, there is MJ and Aunt May (who both knew his identity by this time), but still, Pete willing letting another hero into his privacy circle was a big deal (According to New Avengers, only six or seven months old by this time) we see that both Spider-Woman (Jessica Drew—whom he met in her comics in #s
20 &
29) knew his identity as did DD (which we just established here). Also, obviously so did Cap Who recruited Pete into the New Avengers after the breakout on the Raft (Cap mentioned a SHIELD file, so it is probable that SHIELD (Nick Fury and perhaps others) knew as well.
So I suppose that after all of that perhaps Bobby could have known, but it is more likely that someone (the writer of the editor of
SMF #8) half remembered that MTU issue, and simply tossed it in to make the story
work.” Needless to say, for me, it simplyjavascript:void(0)
Save Now didn’t.
I can’t wait for this entire sordid episode to be over, but I seriously shudder to think what travesty will follow. I fear that it can only get worse.
Oh yeah, if I’m shown that I’m wrong (in that Bobby
did know Pete’s secret identity), I’ll be happy to apologize in this space.
OK, so I (finally) finished reading the six-issue Spider-Man Clone Saga and I have to say that I really enjoyed the conclusion of this six-issue tale. Which just makes me all the more upset that this is “an imaginary tale” so to speak. (Yeah, yeah, I know, they are ALL imaginary tales, but that’s entirely besides the point.)
